The Highlander's English Bride Read online

  "Is there some disaster in London? Last week’s report from Henry Parnell didn’t mention any trouble."

  She supposed she should be outraged that he’d kept an eye on her activities, but something silly and female in her softened to know that he hadn’t forgotten her altogether. In her darker days, she couldn’t help remembering that out of sight was out of mind. "Your man of business spies on me?"

  Again, not a shred of shame. "I like to know what’s happening."

  "You—"

  Hamish looked over her head. "Billy, I see that my wife and I are overdue a long and frank discussion. Perhaps you could take her back to Lyon House. I’ll follow, once I’ve packed up here."

  "Aye, Glen Lyon."

  Emily planted her feet on the ground, although she was woefully aware that if it came to a contest of strength, either of these brawny Highlanders could best her in a trice. "I’m not a parcel to be marked returned to sender. I’m your wife, and I insist upon staying. Billy can go back to the house, and you can escort me there once we’ve finished our business."

  If she didn’t strangle him first.

  "Och, I’ll just go and check the horses, Glen Lyon." Big Billy sounded eager to escape being caught in the middle of a marital quarrel. "Ye just tell me what to do when you ken what your plans are."

  With ill-concealed relief, the large Highlander headed back to where the ponies nosed at the lush grass beside the stream.

  "This dwelling is unfit for you, my lady," Hamish said, once they had a modicum of privacy.

  "If it’s fit for my lord, it’s fit for me," Emily snapped.

  Then she forgot Big Billy and Glen Lyon as a horrid thought struck her. If she wasn’t so tired after miles of traveling, it would have struck her the moment her husband opened the door.

  It was clear that Hamish didn’t want her setting foot inside. Was that because he kept his mistresses in this rough tower?

  It explained why the staff at Lyon House had been so chary about bringing her here. It explained why her husband greeted her wearing only a bedsheet and why his face was slack with sleep at this advanced hour of the day. Not to mention that she’d never demanded his fidelity, once she’d barred him from her bed.

  So the hot red mist that descended to blind her made no sense at all.

  "Where is she, Hamish?" she asked in a voice that sliced like a razor.

  "Where is who?" Hamish asked, sounding as innocent as a babe in arms. She’d wager all the money in her purse that he hadn’t laid any real claim to innocence since he was that infant.

  Emily growled deep in her throat and marched forward, wondering what she’d do if he didn’t shift to let her by.

  She might be smaller than him, but she was ablaze with fury. On this occasion, her temper trumped his size. After a hesitation, he fell back and let her shove past him.

  The tower wasn’t large. Her gaze swept the gloomy, windowless ground floor and confirmed even through the darkness that the uninviting space was empty. The shadows concealed no round-heeled Highland lassies.

  Breathing audibly through her nose, she mounted the stone stairs to the next level. Another round chamber with a few narrow arrow-slit windows and an unlit fireplace. A table and chairs, a couch, an untidy bookcase. No comely wench waiting here either.

  "Emily, you’re being foolish," Hamish said behind her, in the tone he’d used when he told her she was wrong about his calculations for his comet.

  "Am I indeed?" she muttered, more to herself than to him.

  She rushed up the next flight of stairs to the bedroom Hamish had just left, if the sheet missing from the bed was any indication.

  The light was better here. This room boasted a ring of windows, offering a breathtaking view over the rugged hills. Not that Emily was in any frame of mind to appreciate scenery.

  A round house offered no corners for the devil to hide in. The devil – or a brazen hussy. One comprehensive glance proved this room was empty, too.

  Hamish stood at the top of the stairs leading up from below and spread his hands with more of that spurious injured innocence. "You see? I’m alone."

  "There’s another floor," she retorted. She was so furious that she felt like an iron band tightened around her chest.

  Breathless by now, she climbed the last set of stairs to another round room. The tower was built like a spice jar, circular chamber set above circular chamber, tapering to the top.

  No corners. No devil. No woman.

  She glanced around the untidy space, encircled by windows like the one immediately below. This must be where Hamish worked – when he wasn’t tupping the local talent. Papers littered every flat surface. Notebooks. Loose sheets. A quick scan took in drawings and calculations and reams of writing in a familiar scrawl.

  Over the years, she’d transcribed enough of Hamish’s work into a fair hand to recognize it. She certainly didn’t recognize it from his letters to her in London because there hadn’t been any.

  She heard Hamish following her. He had no need to rush, she started to suspect, just as she suspected she was making the most frightful fool of herself.

  Another stairway sloped up to what she guessed was the roof. More slowly, she made her way upward, already sure of what she’d find. Humiliation churned in her stomach and left a sour taste in her mouth.

  Emily paused when she got to the top, not just because she was winded from climbing all those stairs, but because at last she took in the view. A view that didn’t include any females rousted from her husband’s bed, although it did include a large telescope on an elaborate stand and a couple of tables heaped with scientific instruments. Around her stretched a vista of treeless hills offering no signs of human habitation, apart from the faint dirt track that she and Billy had followed to get here and Billy himself. Billy was leading the ponies toward a grove of Scots pines that grew beside the tower.

  Mortification crawled along Emily’s backbone. It felt like a host of spiders. Another crowd of spiders waged a battle inside her stomach.

  "You’ve been working," she said flatly, turning to where Hamish stood near the parapet.

  He watched her with steady blue eyes. "Yes."

  "I thought—"

  "I know what you thought." Of course, he did. What made her cringe was that he’d understand that her outburst proved she was far from indifferent to him. She cursed herself for showing her hand so early in the game.

  "That’s why you were still in bed at four o’clock in the afternoon."

  His gesture encompassed the empty wilderness surrounding them. "It’s the perfect place for an observatory. No light to interfere with the stars."

  She regarded him without pleasure. "You can’t try and tell me there have been no women, Hamish. I won’t believe it. It’s been nearly eleven months since our wedding."

  He looked annoyed, although whether at her accusation or at being caught out, she wasn’t sure. "Why should you care?"

  She shouldn’t. After all, she’d faced the possibility – certainty – of him straying since she’d agreed to marry him. If he lost his temper, for once Emily couldn’t blame him. She’d acted like a madwoman. But the idea of Hamish finding physical pleasure in this isolated love nest made her want to smash something.

  Something like his handsome face.

  "Nobody likes having their nose rubbed in the sins of an unfaithful spouse."

  "I’m miles from the nearest dwelling. I have no visitors, apart from the people who bring my supplies up from Lyon House." The way he hitched at the slipping sheet reeked of offended virtue. "If I brought twenty women here, I wouldn’t be rubbing your nose in it."

  Every muscle in her body tensed. "Have you?"

  "Have I what?" he asked huffily, folding his arms over his bare chest.

  "Have you brought twenty women here?"

  "It’s none of your business," he said snidely. "You gave me permission to pursue my entertainment elsewhere, remember?"

  Damn it, she had. Even then, she hadn’t liked
the idea, but she’d been trying to play fair. Right now, playing fair could go to the dickens. "Discreetly."

  He made an exasperated sound deep in his throat and spread his hands to indicate the beautiful if rather desolate view. "I’m stuck in a blasted tower in the middle of nowhere. How much more discreet can a man be?"

  His theatrical gesture threatened to dislodge the sheet. Her attention dipped to his waist where crumpled linen drooped to reveal a nest of golden curls at the base of his stomach.

  She didn’t want to blush, but she did. She didn’t want to keep looking, but she did.

  Her gloved hands closed into fists at her sides, as she couldn’t help remembering what he looked like naked. Their long separation had done nothing to diminish the vividness of that particular memory.

  "Emily, for God’s sake…" he said in a strangled voice, as shaking hands hauled the sheet back to his waist.

  Her cheeks might feel ready to catch fire, but that didn’t stop her from subjecting his body to a slow inspection before she raised her eyes to his face. She’d remembered him as handsome, almost offensively so, but after all these months apart, his leonine magnificence struck her like a blow.

  Hamish was thinner than he’d been in London, and he must have gone shirtless in the summer, because the skin of his chest and arms was tanned deep gold, heightening the leonine impression. When she’d seen him naked, the dim candlelight or her own innocence must have prevented her from taking in a lot of details. Like the way gilt hair curled across his chest and arrowed down his flat stomach to disappear beneath that dratted concealing sheet.

  Every drop of moisture evaporated from her mouth, and her blood set up a deep slow pulse. Whatever he might say, her husband hadn’t spent all these months locked away in scholarly pursuits. Unless her recollection betrayed her, the muscles of his arms and torso were more defined than they’d been after the wedding.

  "If you keep looking at me like that, you’ll discover just what the local lassies have been lining up to enjoy," he sniped.

  "You have the nerve to taunt me?"

  "You have the nerve to hiss at me like a scalded cat, when you sent me away in the first place?"

  Emily hardly heard what he said. She’d always acknowledged the beauty of that bass drawl, but had it always made her very bones vibrate?

  She licked parched lips, as she studied the man she’d married. How on earth had she missed what a splendid creature he was? After their long separation, it was as if she saw him for the first time. And what she saw was more compelling than she’d ever imagined.

  "Emily?"

  She came back to herself enough to note the bewilderment underlying the irritation.

  "How many lassies?" Where did that husky tone come from?

  Hamish glared at her as if she’d lost her mind. She supposed she should be grateful that he wasn’t crowing over the lack of incriminating evidence uncovered in her frantic search. But she wasn’t quite at that point yet.

  "You may as well tell me. I’ll find out anyway," she said coldly. Once he did, she’d hunt down every one of those Scottish trollops and scratch out their eyes.

  He sighed and ran his fingers through the tumbled mane of golden hair. "You’re not going to let this go, are you?"

  "No."

  Hamish turned and stared across the hills. She appreciated the back view of her husband almost as much as the front one. Especially since when he looked away, she could feast on the sight unobserved.

  Broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist, and the sheet outlined firm buttocks and long, strong legs. Those acres of smooth golden skin across his back were taut. He must be having trouble finding the words to confess his sins.

  "Have you lost count?" she asked with a hint of acid.

  He turned to her again. In his tanned face, the blue eyes were bright as cornflowers, and his thinness made his cheekbones as sharp and pure as those on a medieval sculpture. "No."

  "Then?" Her stomach tightened in squirming anticipation. She didn’t want to know. She couldn’t live another moment without finding out.

  A wry smile creased his cheeks. She really couldn’t get used to that beard. "It doesn’t take long to count to zero."

  Every ounce of breath left her in a whoosh, and she sagged. Such powerful relief rushed through her that it turned her legs into wet string. "None?"

  He shrugged as if he hadn’t changed her world with a single sentence. "I told you, I’ve been working."

  Incredible as it was, she believed him. Hamish didn’t lie. Her head was swimming. She still had trouble getting enough air into her lungs. "All these months."

  "Pretty much."

  She slumped into a plain wooden chair and shook her head in self-disgust. "I’ve made a complete spectacle of myself." She shot him a resentful glance. "And you let me."

  Amusement lit his features. "There was no stopping you."

  "At first." He dragged another chair across the roof and sat opposite her.

  "But afterward…"

  He spread his hands to indicate his blamelessness. "Your tantrum was too intriguing. Never in my wildest dreams had I pictured you as jealous."

  "I’m not jealous," she said in outrage, sitting up as straight as a ruler and scowling at him. Jealousy implied she cared about this great galoot. When she didn’t.

  Hamish let the silence extend. After a few seconds, the odious truth stuck its claws into Emily and her eyes flickered away from his knowing sapphire stare.

  How utterly devastating. How utterly disagreeable. Plague take him, she had been jealous. In fact, she’d been so jealous, she’d gone quite demented.

  Who knew she harbored such possessive feelings about her husband? She’d come to Scotland for a rational discussion about their future. Yet she’d launched her campaign with a fit of fireworks that revealed far too much and put her at a distinct disadvantage.

  "Why?" she managed to ask.

  "Why was I working?"

  He was playing games. She knew he understood her question. It was her turn to subject him to an uncomfortable silence.

  After a while, his lips flattened. "Nobody took my fancy."

  Her arched eyebrows told him that she found that explanation inadequate.

  He shifted on the chair, making it creak. "Damn it, Emily. This is my home. I’m the laird. I’m a married man." He sounded nettled. "I owe it to my clan to set an example."

  "Didn’t you get lonely?"

  She’d seen Hamish lose himself in his work until nothing else existed, but for heaven’s sake he’d been away since last December. That was a long time for a lusty male to go without female company. She’d spent their time apart battling not to dwell on what Hamish might do to amuse himself in her absence. The subject was too painful, even at that distance. Now she knew there had been no other women, she was curious.

  His grunt was self-derisory. "Of course I bloody did."

  "So…"

  "So nothing." He went on with such reluctance that she couldn’t doubt his sincerity. "The shameful truth is that I missed you like the devil. There. You came up here determined to hear a dreadful confession, and now you have."

  "You missed me?" That seemed even more unlikely than the fact that her red-blooded husband hadn’t tumbled every strumpet between here and Inverness.

  "Yes, laugh if you like." He sounded so grim and miserable, she had to believe he’d missed her. "It’s dashed funny, after all."

  She spread her hands in bafflement, even as insidious warmth squeezed her heart. "If you missed me, why on earth didn’t you come back to London and blooming well see me?"

  "You told me to leave you alone." The deep voice was flat.

  A dismissive snort escaped her. "That didn’t mean you had to forsake me forever."

  "It sounded like it. I said in my letter that I wouldn’t bother you again, unless you asked me to come back."

  "So you decided I didn’t want to hear a single word from you in the meantime?"

  He frowned. "You
haven’t inundated me with mail either."

  Hamish had a point. "I assumed once you’d returned to your real life, you wouldn’t want to hear from me."

  "We seem to have made a lot of assumptions."

  "We do." She paused then went on in a more measured tone. "Perhaps a few of them were wrong."

  For a long moment, they stared at each other. Emily wondered how different things might have been if Hamish had stayed in London. She had an inkling that he was thinking exactly the same thing.

  Eventually he straightened in his chair and sent her a direct look. "Just what are you doing here, Emily?"

  She swallowed. The moment had arrived to explain why she’d come in pursuit of a neglectful husband. She was sick with nerves. Which made no sense at all. She’d traveled for days to reach this tower. The whole way, she’d practiced what she had to say, and for a good few weeks before she left London.

  Now she knew that Hamish had missed her and that he’d stayed faithful, her task should be easier. But those revelations remained too astonishing for her to feel like she could rely on them.

  She swallowed again and cursed the way her voice emerged reedy and unsteady. "I decided my place was with my husband."

  If she expected him to greet that announcement with any gratification, she was to be disappointed. The chiseled features remained unreadable as he said slowly, "Did you indeed?"

  She rose on legs that still felt wobbly. Perhaps standing might make her feel less at a disadvantage.

  "I did." When Hamish didn’t respond straightaway, she forced out the hardest bit. "I hoped…I thought if you were willing, we might try to find some common ground in this marriage."

  Hamish stood, too. He hitched the sheet higher and wheeled toward the steps.

  Speechless, Emily watched him go. What on earth was he doing? She felt as though she’d sliced out her heart and laid it at his feet, and all he did was run away. Again.

  "Hamish?" Her voice shook. "Did you hear me?"

  "Yes," he said without turning back.

  "So what do you say?"

  At least she no longer sounded like a squeaky ninnyhammer. Shock receded under the more familiar urge to biff him with the nearest hard object.